


Pushing Daisies

by alestar



Category: Naruto
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 01:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3230510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the otpprompts prompt: "Imagine your OTP in a Pushing Daisies scenario, where they can not touch each other without person B dying."  Only not angsty in the slightest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pushing Daisies

.

The last person to die by Hatake Kakashi’s hand is a nurse at the Konoha Hospital, who touches the skin of the Rokudaime’s neck while lifting his head to change his pillow.  It isn’t literally his hand, of course, that kills the nurse, but Kakashi watches the other man seize and fall to the floor, yelling hoarsely for help, with his old friends guilt and bleak dread standing by.

  
—  
  
"I don’t know," says Sakura.  Her glowing hands hover several inches above Kakashi’s chest, and her face is pinched.  "It may be something Kiyohime did to you, or it could be a residual effect of your Jibashi jutsu.  Direct physical contact initiated a chakra exchange, and that triggered a sudden electromagnetic field that caused brain death."  Her eyes flick up to Kakashi’s.  "It was painless."  
  
Kakashi nods, and Sakura lowers her hands. 

"We touched you when they first brought you back, so there must have been some kind of delay.  There’s a good chance it’s temporary."  She reaches out on instinct to pat his leg through the hospital blanket, but her hand drops halfway.  "We’ll figure it out, sensei."  
  
—  
  
Not much changes, actually.  Kakashi in his youth perfected the art of not touching— of not exposing much of himself to be touched— so he has a wealth of habits to fall back on. The small things that do change, however, are significant.  He can’t pet his dogs anymore.  And of course there’s Gai. 

"Well, you should probably make some lifestyle changes," Kakashi says casually, once he has been released from the hospital.

Gai limps to the kotatsu with two cups of tea and lowers himself gracefully to sit opposite Kakashi.  

"There were many years of Youthful Passion when I was not allowed to touch you, Hokake-sama," he replies, unfazed, smiling— gazing at Kakashi in the same old way, only now Kakashi can see the lust there as well as the affection. "I think I will manage."  
  
—  
  
In the days and weeks following, they settle into something remarkably close to their old routine.  They eat together on those admittedly rare occasions when Kakashi doesn’t eat at his desk.  They pass by each other in the bathroom.  They watch TV sitting next to each other when Kakashi gets home too late and too exhausted to do anything else.    
  
Kakashi sets up a small secondary bed in a corner of their bedroom, and Gai grumbles, but it says something about Kakashi’s advancing age— his Flowering Wisdom, Gai calls it— that he doesn’t withdraw from Gai more than that.   
  
There was a time in his life when Kakashi was sure that he would bring death to anyone he loved.  _That_ Kakashi would have left without telling anyone; would have run to the edges of the earth to escape that loss; would have paid his final respects at the Memorial Stone and then settled in a cave on the outskirts of some foreign nation, a desolate hermit, alone at last.     
  
This Kakashi wonders what Gai would do without him.  He believes in his importance to the other man and knows that it is not for him to extend in the way he has extended and then withdraw.  He has made promises to Gai— and to his friends and to Konoha— and keeping those promises is more important than protecting himself from even that unspeakable harm.    
  
Furthermore, he trusts in Gai’s strength.  The only man still faster than Hatake Kakashi, Konoha’s retired Sublime Green Beast.  Even with his leg out of order, if Gai doesn’t want to be touched, he won’t be touched.  He’s also one of the few shinobi Kakashi knows who will definitively never follow the dark path of his own death wish toward ruin.  Gai is steady as the earth.  Kakashi, for his part, can be the cloudline: remote but constant, concave, hovering reliably near him.  
  
Their sex life remains surprisingly active, despite the new sleeping arrangements— possibly due to Gai’s desire to prove something, but Kakashi’s not complaining.  It gives him an excuse to improve his dirty talking skills. It would probably be safe for Kakashi to touch Gai through his clothes, but he isn’t taking any chances, so they sit opposite each other on their respective bedspreads, touching themselves while Kakashi's gaze travels over Gai's face, his bared shoulders, his arms.  Kakashi watches, eyes heavy-lidded, as Gai’s hand moves over his cock; he slips the tip of a finger into his own wet mouth.    
  
—  
  
After five months of testing, Sakura tells him he’s all clear.  She can’t detect any chakra abnormalities in any part of his body, and he passes a series of morally-questionable trials— first on a squirrel then on progressively larger mammals and finally on a consenting but fatally-wounded trauma patient.  Everyone survives.   
  
He goes straight home from the hospital with a profound unease in his chest. 

It is a given that he will tell Gai the prognosis and that he and Gai will begin to touch each other again.  But the awareness is there— what if the mysterious condition returns?  What if the subject has to be healthy?  What if there’s something particular about Gai?  Will Kakashi wake up a year from now with his hand thrown carelessly over his husband’s dead body?

But he knows there is no alternative.  This is the great lesson of Kakashi’s past that allowed him to be with Gai in the first place: there are harms from which one cannot protect oneself, and there are nightmare risks that should not be avoided.

Gai sees his distress right away.

"What did Sakura say?"  He sets a cup of tea in front of Kakashi, and Kakashi stares inertly down into it. Gai settles next to him at the kotatsu.

"She says I’m all better." 

Gai’s smiles blindingly.  He takes Kakashi’s hand, careful to broadcast his movement, and threads their fingers together.  Relief courses through Kakashi, but he scowls.

"That could have been the last time you touched me, you should have at least kissed me." 

Without letting go of Kakashi’s hand, Gai cups his cheek, two fingers slipping under the mask to pull it down, and leans in.  "We have time."

.


End file.
